


waiting for a song

by deadcellredux



Category: Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Depression, Friendship, M/M, POV Second Person, Sloppy Makeouts, Writer's Block, i swear this isn't as horrible as the tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadcellredux/pseuds/deadcellredux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve hasn’t written a song in months. It’s the reason you came to New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	waiting for a song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



> Hello! :) I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! I was SO excited to receive your prompt-- Lost Souls was a completely random choice for me in signups, and I was shocked to have it as my assignment! Your Yuletide letter really struck a chord with me; I first read Lost Souls when I was 14 or 15, and it really did have a huge effect on those formative years of my life. I read it countless times as a teenager, and much like you, it inspired me to really ponder a lot of things about myself and my life! I read the book for the first time in over ten years in preparation for writing this, and while it obviously didn't have as much significance to me as it did back then, I realized that I am still madly in love with Steve and Ghost (also, it was quite a wild trip down nostalgia lane for me, with all the memories brought back by reading this again)! I hope this fic isn't completely terrible, and I really hope you enjoy it!!! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write this. :) :) :) (P.S.: I wound up tweaking this until the last minute, so I apologize for any errors which may have slipped by!)

“Fuck, man,” Steve mutters, stretching his arms out above his head. He leans back ever so slightly in the low-backed stool, somehow still managing to stay hunched over the bar. There’s tension in everything about him, right now— the tone of his voice, the way he drums his fingers on the counter, the rough sweep of his hand back through his own hair. 

“Do you _hear_ that?” he continues, and still he doesn’t look at you. You know he’s good and drunk, probably shouldn’t have another drink, but he’s already motioned to the bartender to bring another round. 

“Hearing a lot of things right now,” you answer, and pick up the frost-dappled can of Pabst Blue Ribbon the bartender sets before you. It’s not that you’re trying to be a dick; you know Steve’s had some trouble lately, and you’re honestly not sure what he’s referring to. You can’t _always_ read him like a book; sometimes you need a footnote. Right now, he could be focused on the conversation of the couple seated besides you, or the two hipsters standing behind you. It could be the clatter of pint glasses or the hiss pop of lighters as cigarettes flare up. There are other voices too, the kind that only you can hear, and there’s a man standing at the far end of the bar that only you can see. You close your eyes for several seconds, and when you open them, he’s gone.

At times like these, it’s best not to bring those things up.

“This _song_ ,” Steve says, and something in his voice is strained. He swivels to face you, sets a foot between yours on the footrest of your barstool. One of his thighs is between yours, and when they touch for a moment his skin feels so hot through the black, ripped denim. He leans forward, closes his eyes and half sings, half moans a line of lyrics in a quiet, beer-heavy drawl, then opens his eyes and looks at you. He’s got bags under them, and some creases at the corners whenever he laughs or smiles (two things which haven’t been happening much as of late), and even though he’s young you figure his sort of lifestyle would do that to a person, pretty quickly. 

“The melody, it’s just… so simple and so _perfect_ ,” Steve rests an elbow on the bar and leans his chin against his fist. Or at least he tries to. He misses on the first attempt. “It’s like, only a few chords, too. And I can’t even do that, _shit_.”

It’s so loud here, louder than you’re used to, and past Steve you can see the lights of the city muddled together through the bar windows like a neon contusion. It’s overwhelming, in a way, and you focus on Steve, let his presence be the anchor preventing you from losing yourself in all of the background noise, the insistent crackling nudging your consciousness.

“Hey, y’think—“ Steve begins, and then pauses. He furrows his brow at you and pats your thigh with the unintentional roughness of a person trying to express some momentous point. The feeling of his skin against yours through the tears in your jeans causes you to shiver. “You think we got a minibar in the room?”

“You already drank the mini-bar. Before we left.”

Steve’s eyes widen and he pulls back incredulously. “Shit man, I forgot.”

“It’s cool,” you say, softly. 

When you look past Steve, the ghost-man at the end of the counter is back, and he’s staring right at you. You start at the sight, suck in a huge breath as you feel the sudden _misery_ of that sad soul trapped here after drinking its body to death. You hang your head to look down at your lap and squeeze your eyes shut, and when you open them, Steve’s face is in your vision as he twists comically around to get his eyes up close to yours.

“ _What’s wrong_?” he asks, and the concern in his voice is heartbreakingly genuine. Sometimes you feel as if his care for you is one of the main things keeping him going; you’re the one thing he puts all his faith in, the one thing he’ll always fight to hold close, to protect. He continues, whispering in one of the loudest drunken-attempted-whispers you’ve heard lately, “are you _seeing things_ in here?”

You rest your forehead against his, briefly, and the look on his face softens further. “Don’t worry about it,” you say, as you motion for the bartender. 

It’s time to close your tab.

\+ + + +

Steve hasn’t written a song in months. It’s the reason you came to New York.

Steve has his ups and downs, and most of the time you can sense them coming, sometimes know what they’re about even better than he does. This time, though, you can’t do much to help the problem, because you can’t tell him why he hasn’t been able to write a song in months, or why his guitar is gathering dust, or why he feels like music has left him. It’s triggered a downward spiral he’s been riding for a while now, coming up for air every so often before sinking back down beneath the waves of his own misery, down into the depths of bottles and the echoes of all the ugly things that haunt him. This is, of course, the par for the course with Steve, though lately it’s been so much worse, a fact made evident by the fact that _you_ were the one who had to drag him on a road trip, for once.

“Let’s go to New York,” he had said, one night when you were lying on your backs in bed together, staring at the ceiling you’d plastered with glow-in-the-dark stars. “Maybe I need some… fast-paced shit to get me going. You know?”

You had nodded and tried not to let the very pointed, very _real_ fear in his voice seep into you. There are only two things in the world which are _really_ important to Steve: music, and you. Right now, you’re not sure you’d be enough for him to go on, if he never wrote another song again. 

And it’s horrifying to you, too, to think that all the words in your head will no longer have a home inside his music.

\+ + + +

You don’t go immediately go back to the hotel; instead you wind up in Central Park on one of Steve’s whims, wandering twisted pathways in silence until you’re not quite sure how far in you are or in which direction you are traveling. Steve doesn’t seem to care, and you wouldn’t either if you didn’t hear the occasional whisper or sense the occasional presence somewhere around you— in the trees, on the surface of a lake, right there behind you. Part of you really likes the loud, frenetic bustle of the city; it’s so much easier to find things to focus on when something unwelcome tries to poke its way into your head. You get that enough, in the silence of Missing Mile, and your stay in New York City has, so far, been like a little vacation for your brain. Specter at the bar aside.

“Pretty beautiful, out here,” Steve says, and his voice sounds so loud in the overwhelming silence, each syllable clear and pointed. “Even if I am tired as shit.”

He’s sobered up a bunch on your walk, and mellowed out a bit, too— you no longer feel him coiled tight as a bowstring in your brain, though you know he’s still very, very sad. Watching him has been interesting; he investigates the fauna around you, climbs up on rocks, hops over branches on the path. He picks a couple of dandelions and wordlessly hands you one before tucking the other behind his ear. It’s like watching a big kid, really. Or watching the Steve you remember from your childhood, endless afternoons spent exploring the woods together in summer heat.

Finally, he stops. The two of you have strayed off the path into a little thicket surrounded by a crop of large stones and some weeping willows. Fireflies flash their slow glow in the dark, and Steve runs both his hands back through the messy black mass of his hair.

“Aw fuck, Ghost, why don’t we just sleep here?”

“ _Here_?”

“Fuck yeah. Come on. It’s so fucking peaceful out here.”

He nudges your arm with hot fingers and then leaves them there, just the tips against your skin.

“Thought you wanted the ‘fast-paced’ atmosphere. You getting homesick already?” you ask.

“Nah.” He shakes his head, puts his hands on his hips and stares at the ground for a few seconds before heaving a sigh and looking up at the sky. “Just losing my fucking mind, is all.”

He plops down to settle on the ground at your feet and leans back against the wide trunk of one of the willows. You reach out to brush your fingers against the thin, hanging threads of leaves, and there are no sounds around you now, nothing you can _sense_ except for the dense, humid air of summer and the smell of soil and grass. You run your fingers over the bark of the tree above Steve’s head, trace gnarled knots and patterns in the wood and pull away with sap-covered fingers, which you wipe on the thigh of your jeans.

“You gonna sit down or are you gonna fondle trees all night?” Steve asks. You look down at him, meeting his eyes, and he raises an eyebrow. He looks exhausted.

You sit down next to him at the base of the tree, leaning your back against the trunk. Your shoulders touch, and you can hear Steve sigh. Steve shifts so that one of his legs is touching yours, and you rest your head on his shoulder because you’re so very tired and he’s so very warm and right now you know that this is all either of you need.

“You really want to sleep here?” you ask, even though you already know the answer. 

“Yeah,” Steve responds, and he takes your hand in his.

\+ + + + 

Eventually you wind up lying tangled together at the base of the tree, and Steve has finally broken, letting out everything you know he’s had pent up and tried to hide under pretense of _hope_ since you left North Carolina.

“I just don’t know,” he says, sniffling against your shirt where it’s already been soaked with his tears. “I don’t fucking know what’s _wrong_ with me.”

“I think you’re having a quarter-life crisis,” you murmur into his hair, stroking gently.

He looks up at you and frowns. “The fuck is that?”

“I don’t know. I just made it up. Makes sense though, right?” you half-smile at him and wipe tears off of his cheek, and he rolls his eyes and settles down against you again. His fingers fist absently in your clothing and eventually his breathing evens out again before he shakes his head against your chest and pulls back, finally, with a long sniffle, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

It’s dark, but not dark enough to see where the damp spots of his face reflect the light of the moon beneath his eyes.

“It’s just, what the fuck am I. What are we gonna do, if this is over? Do we have to… _break up_ Lost Souls? Is this a thing that is happening to me? God that sounds so stupid—”

“ _Steve_ ,” you say, and your voice is firm, and something about the way he looks at you right now is so fucking beautiful, out here alone in the dark, blanketed by false silence in the center of a city of noise. You lean closer, and Steve’s eyes widen when he finds your face only inches from his.

“Lost Souls? is not a thing that’s going to _end_ , Steve. It’s… _us_. It’s not going anywhere. You’re going to be fine. It’s going to be alright,” you say, and you reach up a hand to touch Steve’s face, running your thumb absently over the corner of his mouth. “It’s us,” you repeat, quietly.

Steve takes your hand in his and for a moment you worry that perhaps he’s going to get angry, push you away, snap, leave, _anything_ in the volatile Finn repertoire. You’re worried he’s going to reject this— whatever _this_ is— and resign himself to his own miserable, soundless solitude. 

But that isn’t what happens, not at all. 

Instead Steve kisses your hand, clumsily, your palm and then your fingers and he just keeps _going_ and all you can do is watch and gasp at the feel of his mouth, so slight and warm and _insistent_ , like he’s trying to tell you something.

“Steve,” you say, and put your other hand on his shoulder, and you’re really not drunk anymore so you’ve no excuse for this, but the words start to tumble from your mouth before you can get a hold on them and come to your fucking senses. “can I… can we…” 

He’s already leaning in.

“This?” he murmurs, against your shocked and open mouth. He kisses you gently, carefully. “Is this—“ and again, this time a peck on the corner of your mouth, “what you meant?”

The wet, hot touch of Steve’s tongue when it slips along your bottom lip is enough to snap you out of your motionless state of disbelief, and you kiss back, jumping right in to the frenetic discord Steve’s begun, seemingly so caught up in _right now_ that you wonder if Steve even knows what he’s doing. He tastes like smoke and shitty beer and like summer, _dear God_ , he tastes like every summer you’ve ever known together and you can’t help but lean forward, into him, kissing him furiously as a very bright, very visual flood of memories together cascades into your mind and threatens to overwhelm you. You can feel him, his heat and his mouth and you can _sense_ him, too— his excitement and arousal and even _fear_ at this very moment, and it’s all lost somewhere in the muddled space between _too much_ and _not enough_.

“Is this okay?” you pant, barely able to get through the sentence before Steve takes your mouth again, hands tracing frenzied paths up and down your bare arms and over your shoulders, covered now, with goosebumps from his touch. “ _Is this okay_?” you repeat, and you’re shocked by the volume and the desperation of your voice, but this is _important_ and if this is not okay then you’ve no business doing it, especially when Steve is in such a fraught and fragile state.

“Of course it’s okay,” Steve answers, and you’re taken aback by the ragged force behind the statement, the way Steve’s voice sounds as if it’s hinging on the edge of a sob. “Oh _God_ , it’s okay, I need you, please, please…”

He’s begging against your neck now, pressing his lips there, and you tilt your head back to look up at the sky, the endless constellations there in the monochrome blue. It’s all very overwhelming, suddenly, and you know that as much as you are feeling, Steve must be feeling double. This isn’t really a thing you’ve done often; it’s happened a few times, but the topic stays one unspoken for the most part. Sometimes you’re not sure if Steve does this out of weakness or if it really does stem from the fact that he loves you. 

Because he does. 

This is one fact of which you will always be unwaveringly sure. 

You’ve one hand in his hair and the other on his shoulder, and you pull gently, barely; just enough to give him the hint that you want his mouth back level with yours, _on_ yours. This level of physical affection isn’t something you typically desire; fucking is a hell of a lot less important to you than it is to Steve, but this _means_ something, and it _is_ Steve, and you’ve gone father with Steve than you’ve gone with anyone. Which isn’t very far.

When he brings his mouth up to yours his face is wet again. He hugs you close to him, as close as you can get lying twisted and awkward together like this, and he barely has enough time to let the _sorry I’m so fucked up_ slip whispered from his lips before your tongue is in his mouth.

\+ + + +

Steve is sorry about a lot of things. He’s made mistakes and hasn’t been the best person and he wakes you up constantly with screaming from his nightmares and he’s left cigarette burns on the kitchen table and sometimes he falls into bed smelling like a filthy bar rag, but none of this matters to you right now. None of it matter to you _ever_ , really, and no matter what happens you know that at the end of the day you will always hold him close to you. Literally.

At this point, you wonder if either one of you would be able to sleep without the other.

\+ + + +

When the two of you have stilled, sated and sleepy, your foreheads are touching and you’ve draped your limbs around one another. It’s hot and you’re both sweaty and gross but you really don’t care, because the both of you needed this. You tangle your fingers lazily with Steve’s, and you can feel the contentedness rolling off him in waves.

“That was nice,” you say, and he half-opens his eyes to look into yours.

“Yeah,” he responds, and squeezes your fingers in his. “Really nice. I just…”

He trails off and remains silent, and you’re thankful for it— not because you don’t care about what he has to say or don’t _enjoy_ listening to him talk, but the fact remains that there really are no words to describe what it is that the two of you have. This unspoken thing between you. This strange kind of love, so thick as to be nearly smothering, so strong that it can’t be broken.

After a minute he continues. “To think all this crazy shit happened because I’m just…” he sighs. “Just _waiting for a song to come_ …” 

He sing-songs the last six words, then gasps and falls deathly still and quiet.

“What’s wrong?” you ask, and pull back to look at his face.

“That’s it. Holy shit. _Holy shit_! That’s it!” he laughs and sits up next to you, and the excitement and joy ripples off of him in waves that tickle the edge of your mind in the very best kind of way. Feeling him like this is almost better than kissing him. Almost.

“Can you write that?” he grabs both of your hands in his and squeezes, waves them around like an excited kid on Christmas morning. “Like, can you work lyrics off of that?”

“ _’Just waiting for a song to come’_?”

“Yeah! Fuck, I got a melody in my head right now. Right there!” Steve closes his eyes and hums the same bar in which he first sung the line, and then continues, letting go of your hands to tap out a beat on your chest with his fingers. His eyes shoot open. “Fuck, where’s my guitar?”

“Uh, it’s in our hotel room.”

“We gotta go back.”

“Thought you wanted to sleep outside.”

“Fuck that,” he says, and he leans over you, touching a quick, chaste kiss on your lips. “We got a fuckin’ _song_ to write.”

He kisses you again. 

And again.

You don’t get back to the hotel room for a while.

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to ["Twerk" by Lady](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPhYRtK0fBU) on repeat while writing most of this. I'm only mentioning this because I think its kinda funny. Because this fic contains absolutely no twerking whatsoever.


End file.
